Today, love remains a central theme in many literary writings.
But in the current literary works, what is concentrated is no longer the firmness and sincerity of love, no longer the death of it, but the selfishness and deception, betrayal and lies about love.
This is not unrelated to the current view of people's emotions. In the present moment, the death of its love does not seem to be something we believe in, and after seeing the betrayal in love, we no longer believe in love.
This kind of thinking is naturally reflected in the current love works, so we rarely see romantic pure love stories now, leaving only the chicken feathers of love.
But fortunately, we can still look for the pure love works of the past, look for traces of love. Kyoichi Katayama's "Call for Love in the Center of the World" is undoubtedly a story that makes people believe in love.
As a pure love story, the plot of "Calling for Love in the Center of the World" is not complicated, but the narrative method adopted by the author Kyoichi Katayama is quite tortuous, telling a poignant love story through flashbacks and interpolations.
The protagonist, Shuo Jun (Shuo Taro), is a junior high school classmate, and in the process of interaction, he develops love and agrees never to separate. However, on the eve of graduation, Yaji was hospitalized for leukemia and missed a study trip to Australia.
Since then, Yaji's condition has continued to worsen, and before his death, Yaji hopes to go to Australia with Shuojun, and Shuojun arranges everything and takes Yaji out of the hospital.
But just before boarding, Yaji's condition was out of control, and he had to return to the hospital and then died.
Shuojun attends Yaji's funeral, watches Asi cremated, and steals some of his ashes.
Ten years later, Shuo Jun revisited his hometown, and in infinite emotion, he sprinkled Yaji's ashes into the air as the final farewell of this love.
In the translation of Lin Shaohua, the translator of this book, the whole story is shrouded in a faint sadness, just like the sadness of the ending Shuojun scattering his ashes into the sky.
In the love between Shuojun and Yaji, Kyoichi Katayama also intersperses the love story of Shuojun's grandfather.
Many years ago, Grandpa fell in love with a young girl with tuberculosis, and in order to earn money to marry a young girl, Grandpa went to Tokyo. When grandpa returned, the girl had been cured of streptomycin, but due to grandpa's disgraceful experience of earning money, the girl was eventually remarried by her parents. Grandpa then got married.
When grandpa told Shuojun this story, he asked Shuojun to help him steal some of the ashes of his sweetheart, and when he died, he sprinkled the ashes of the two together on the slope of the purple flower ding mountain that the girl liked.
After ShuoJun hesitated, he agreed to his grandfather's request, and later Shuojun's act of stealing Yaji's ashes was undoubtedly inspired by his grandfather.
Whether it is Shuo Jun or Grandpa, the love between the two ended in tragedy. Kyoichi Katayama spends a lot of effort to portray the sincere and childish love between Shuojun and Yaji.
Even though the two are not very old, Shuo jun's love for Yaji is still touching, which is undoubtedly a major reason for the longevity of this book.
The book's translator, Lin Shaohua, is insightful in his interpretation of the story, saying that the story "strives to reveal the value and true meaning of love in the context of the noisy, hypocritical and impetuous times."
This is not false, as mentioned at the beginning, at the moment, more and more people's attitude towards love has become sloppy, we love too early, and give up too quickly, thinking that true love is nothing but a vain rumor, which is an aggressive and strange thing.
But just as we cannot deny the existence of the sun because it will eventually set, we cannot deny the existence of true love because we have seen the lies and betrayals of love.
Even in the impetuous moment, love can still find the soil to take root. Perhaps the story of "Calling for Love in the Center of the World" is constantly lagging behind with the progress of the times, but the love between Shuo Jun and Yaji will never fade.
That's exactly what the book is about in the moment.